Author: VintageJenny

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Escalloped Oysters

VintageJenny

In Lesson 14 of the Saturday morning cooking class, Sue makes Escalloped Oysters. This is a continuing series from the pages of the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook. We started with Lesson 1, which you can find by clicking the linked book title. Sue and her friend Ruth Ann completed an entire year of lessons, one Saturday at a time, and you will find them reproduced for the first time here.

Even in the Twenties a dish like Escalloped Oysters appeared on the table rarely. This was a holiday dish, a celebratory dish, or a Sunday dish for families who routinely made a fancy Sunday dinner for the family. Why Bettina guides while Sue makes Escalloped Oysters, I have no idea.

Several other less expensive and more family-friendly dishes could make their way into small casserole dishes. Perhaps it formed a basis for other escalloped dishes, like salmon, potatoes, tuna, or corn. Today we know of Scalloped Potatoes more often than any of the other options. Long ago we dropped the e in escalloped.

You can still find recipes for Scalloped (or Escalloped) Oysters online, so if you are so inclined you might want to give this recipe a try. It should work just as well with canned or fresh oysters. A 6 1/2 oz can of oysters should give you enough to make this recipe. The Spruce Eats gives the lowdown on cooked and canned oysters

Sue’s notes on Escalloped Oysters

Escalloped oysters is quite a grownup dish — a company dish too. So if it hadn’t been for the new little casseroles Mrs. Rambler gave to Ruth Ann and me for our cooking lessons, Mother might have had us make something else today. (I don’t call her old any more. She isn’t so awfully old when you know her.)

It was Ruth Ann who called for the basket and napkin after all. She said Mrs Rambler told her they were the best muffins she ever ate and they did her head lots of good. (Mother says she guesses the kind thought was what did her head the most good. And that very often cross people aren’t cross if you’re nice to them.) Well, Ruth Ann went in and had quite a nice little visit with her, and told her all about our cooking lessons. And the very next day, here came a messenger with two of the dearest little casseroles you ever saw in all your life, old Kitchen Diary. All wrapped up in tissue paper and ribbon. They were “for the two little cooks.” Of course we already had a casserole but it was an old one, and Mother’s. And these were brand new.

Mother showed us how to temper them so they wouldn’t crack. That meant to put them in a pan of cold water over the fire and let the water come to a boil slowly. After that they were safe, Mother said. But she told us we mustn’t ever put them right over the fire to melt butter in them or anything. Well, I certainly don’t intend to spoil mine that way!

Recipe for Escalloped Oysters

If you like buttered soft bread or cracker crumbs in food, you should love this.

Print Recipe

Escalloped Oysters

From When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 1 pint oysters
  • 3 cups cracker crumbs
  • 2 tsp salt you may want less
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • 5 Tbsp butter
  • 2 ½ cups milk

Instructions

  • Mother had us each put our own oysters (of course a pint means two cupfuls) in a little strainer over a bowl so that we could catch all the liquor that drained off. Then she had us take up an oyster at a time and feel it to see if there was any shell in it or around it. Of course the shell had to be removed.
  • We rolled our crackers fine with a rolling pin, putting them on a piece of nice clean brown paper to do it. Then we each melted our butter in the warm oven in the baking dish we were going to use and of course this buttered the dish and also saved using another. We mixed our cracker, melted butter, salt and paprika together in a clean pan, and when they were well mixed we spread a layer of this cracker mixture over the bottom of the dish. Then we added a layer of oysters (about a third of what we had), spreading them out flat with a fork. Then we spread anther layer of crumbs on them, enough to cover them from sight. Then we added more oysters and more crumbs, more oysters and more crumbs in the same way, having the top layer in crumbs.
  • I forgot to say that we added milk to the oyster liquor so there were two and a half cups of liquids all together. We poured this gently over the top of the dish (I mean the contents of the dish) and then we baked it in a moderate oven for twenty minutes. [moderate oven = 350ºF] When the escalloped oysters were done they were a lovely brown color.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Graham Muffins

VintageJenny

Come into the kitchen while Sue makes Graham Muffins. These appeared on the Twenties table often because they added fiber to the diet. This is Lesson 13 in the series from When Sue Began to Cook, one of the cookbooks in the Bettina’s Best Recipes book series from the Twenties. If you are just joining the series for the first time, click the book title to transport back to Lesson 1. Sue and her friend Ruth Ann’s story unfolds as the lessons progress. In addition, the recipes increase in difficulty as they go.

Graham muffins contain graham flour. This coarselSy ground whole wheat flour was named for the maker of the Graham cracker. The grind of Graham flour added texture and fiber to the recipe. Unlike almost all other flours and powders in the kitchen, cooks never sifted Graham flour. If they did, the point of the flour stayed behind in the screen.

This is the first muffin recipe to appear in When Sue Began to Cook. Most beginning cookbooks began with simple breads like biscuits and muffins. They were relatively easy to make and looked good even when they came out less than perfect. A good white sauce can be tricky for a beginning cook, yet this is exactly where Bettina began teaching in Lesson 1. Sue and Ruth Ann find the muffin recipe relatively easy after their preceding kitchen adventures.

Sue’s notebook about Graham Muffins

Old Mrs. Rambler, who lives across the street from us (next to the McCarthy’s) has headaches and doesn’t like children. Probably that’s because she lives so close to so many of them. Ruth Ann and I keep thinking how nice it would be if she would only adopt Maxine McCarthy, the one with the beautiful tight curls, and perhaps Clarence Patrick, the well behaved boy, but so far nothing has come of the idea. The children bother her a lot and are always swinging on her gate when she isn’t looking just because it makes her so cross to have them do it. And I suppose she never notices which ones are good and which are bad.

So, with this introduction, anyone would understand how surprised I was when Ruth Ann said to Mother, “Aunt Bettina, would you mind if I carried six or eight of my nice fat muffins over to Mrs. Rambler?”

“But why Mrs. Rambler?” I asked in a surprised tone. “With all the McCarthys there who are always so hungry, why in the world would you slight them in favor of a cross crabbed woman who is simply rolling in money?”

Mother laughed. “Mrs. Rambler isn’t exactly rolling in money, dear,” she said. “And besides, everybody is always doing things for the McCarthys. Let Ruth Ann take her muffins wherever she wishes.”

“I want to give them to Mrs. Rambler because nobody ever thinks of her when the presents are going round,” Ruth Ann said, bravely. I guess she needs to be brave when she talks to me. I can be quite fierce and sarcastic at times.

“We’ll put the muffins in my pretty brown basket,” said Mother. “We’ll put a clean napkin in it first and then we’ll draw it up over the muffins to keep them warm while Ruth Ann is carrying them. You can leave the basket there, dear. Tell her Robin will call for it tomorrow.”

Ruth Ann and I went together on the errand of mercy (only I wasn’t very sympathetic) and Mrs. Rambler herself came to the door. “Here are some muffins for your lunch,” said Ruth Ann, handing them in. “Someone will call for the basket tomorrow.”

“I never have any appetite anymore,” said Mrs. Rambler, but she took the basked and thanked us for it very nicely. Maxine and Clifford were leaning over the fence when we came out. I guess they wondered why on earth we would be taking anything in a basket to old Mrs. Rambler when so many hungry children lived next door. But after all, the McCarthys have more fun than Mrs. Rambler does even if they are hungrier.

Recipe for Graham Muffins

Sometimes the storyline that appears in Sue’s notebook reads a bit odd. This was one of those entries. No explanation is given for Sue’s animosity towards Mrs. Rambler. Only that the neighborhood children annoy her and that this is somehow Mrs. Rambler’s fault. Like I said. Odd.

Here’s the recipe for Graham Muffins. You should be able to replace the graham flour with oat flour if you cannot tolerate wheat, and replace the white flour with 1 to 1 gluten free flour. The muffins will be quite a bit softer but they should still be tasty. The egg will help to hold them together.

Print Recipe

Graham Muffins

from When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 1 cup Graham flour
  • 1 ¼ cups white flour
  • 4 tsp baking powder
  • 4 Tbsp light brown sugar No lumps in it!
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 Tbsp lard or butter, oil, etc.

Instructions

  • Never sift Graham flour! I learned that a long time ago when I was a little girl, so I rememebered today when we began to make our muffins. Mother had us each put the white flour, baking powder, sugar and salt through the flour sifter, and then add the Graham flour. You see, if you sift Graham flour it takes away all the bran part that is so good for you.
  • Well, after we had all the dry things mixed together, we each beat up an egg in a bowl with a Dover egg beater and then added the milk to the egg. Then Mother had us melt the lard the way she does in order to save dishes. She had us light the oven and each warm up a muffin pan in it. Then we each measured out our two level tablespoons of lard in one of the little muffin places. Then we dipped a piece of clean brown paper in the lard and with it, we greased the other muffin compartments. (Of course the one that held the lard was already greased.)
  • Then we emptied the melted lard and the egg and milk in the bowl and with the other things and stirred them all together very thoroughly. (I'm growing a lot of muscle with all this beating!)
  • Then Mother had us fill the greased muffin pans with the batter. Each little compartment had to be only about half full, and the recipe made twelve muffins. Then we baked them in a moderate oven for about twenty minutes and they were done. [moderate oven = 350º F]
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue’s Cream of Tomato Soup

VintageJenny

One of the fun parts of learning to cook well is that we can create favorite dishes for favorite people. In Cooking Lesson 12, Sue’s Cream of Tomato Soup hits the spot because it’s a soup her father loves. This is part of the series of lessons from When Sue Began to Cook, a 1924 cookbook in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series of cookbooks. If you’re just tuning in, you can click the book title to visit Lesson 1 and start from the beginning.

Even though the lessons take place on Saturdays, Sue’s father is at work at the office. This book was written two years before Henry Ford introduced the five day work week. Through the early part of the Twenties, working on Saturdays was normal after working all week. Some people worked half days on Saturday. Others worked all day and only took Sundays off.

This recipe is unusual because it takes two pots to make. Modern tomato soup recipes only require one pot, but this one requires making a white sauce in one pan while heating the tomato puree/broth to boiling in the other. It’s nice to know yet another way of combining ingredients — especially if you don’t mind washing two saucepans at the end of the experiment.

Let’s visit Sue’s notebook to see how the lesson, and the day, went.

Sue’s notes on Cream of Tomato Soup

Probably we wouldn’t have tried anything so hard as Cream of Tomato Soup if it hadn’t been Father’s birthday today. But it is his favorite soup and when I asked him yesterday what he wanted me to give him for a present, he said, “well, you can make me some Cream of Tomato Soup at your cooking lesson.”

“Then,” said Mother, “you’ll have to come home at noon. You know the cooking lesson comes in the morning, and tomato soup ought to be served just after it is made. Even old experienced cooks have trouble with it sometimes and it will be a little hard for beginners like Sue and Ruth Ann.”

“But we can do it, Mother! Please let us!” I begged. It seemed so nice to me to be able to cook just what my father wanted on his birthday.

“I’d like to bring a man home to luncheon with me,” Father said. “A friend of mine who will be in town just for the weekend.”

Mother said we could try the soup, and Father could bring his guest. I tell you, we were excited! Mother had made the birthday cake yesterday, thank goodness, and she let Robin put on the pink candles. Robin felt so important that he acted as if the cake was the main part of the meal, but of course I knew that the soup was the principal thing since Father had asked for it and it was one of his favorite dishes.

Well, Ruth Ann and I were so afraid that the soup would curdle, but it didn’t. (Mother had said that it would if we weren’t very careful.) And what do you suppose? The man Father brought home with him for luncheon was Uncle Harry, Ruth Ann’s father! Ruth Ann was so surprised and happy to see him (you know he gets to town only about once a month) and he was so surprised and happy to know that his only daughter was really learning to cook that poor Father’s birthday was almost forgotten after all.

The Cream of Tomato Soup recipe

Try this one and learn to stir the puree into the hot cream soup. It’s a worthwhile skill for your cooking toolbox.

Print Recipe

Cream of Tomato Soup

from When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 2 cups canned tomatoes
  • 1 Tbsp onion, chopped fine
  • 4 whole cloves
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 cup water
  • 4 Tbsp butter
  • 4 Tbsp flour
  • 1 tsp salt may need less
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • 3 cups milk
  • ¼ tsp soda

Instructions

  • Mother had us each mix our tomatoes, onion, cloves, bay leaf, and water in a small kettle. She had us simmer it for fifteen minutes. That means cook it very slowly, with only a little heat so that it just bubbles now and then but doesn't really boi.. Then we poured it through the strainer, the coarse-meshed one. Mother had us press the cooked tomato through with a spoon. She said we must ust all of it that could be strained. [Strain the mixture into a bowl. You keep the strained liquid and toss the spent vegetables.]
  • Then we each took a clean saucepan and put the butter into it. We melted that over the fire very slowly and then added the flour, salt, and paprika. We mixed it very carefully with a big spoon so that there wasn't a single lump in it. And then we added the milk and cooked it all toggether, stirring it all the time till it was creamy and a little bit thick. After it began to bubble (the fire was low so it wouldn't burn) Mother had us cook it one minute more by the clock.
  • We each put our strained tomato mixture back in the first kettle we had used and heated it till it boiled. Then Mother had us add the soda. This made it fizz up all of a sudden, but we stirred it around for a minute and then emptied all of the tomato part right into the hot creamy milk mixture. Mother says all good cooks know that tomato souo is likely to curdle if the milk is emptied into the tomatoes. The tomatoes must be emptied into the milk. Then we let the soup get very hot for just a minute, and then we dished it up into hot soup plates and served it with crackers that had been put into the hot overn for a few minutes to make them crisp.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Cornbread

VintageJenny

Welcome to the 11th Lesson of When Sue Began to Cook, a cookbook in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series of cookbooks from the Twenties. Today, Sue makes cornbread. These recipes contain common ingredients, solid preparation techniques, and a whole lot of opinion to create customary 1920s food. If this is your first exposure to the series, you can start here or click the book title to jump back to Lesson 1.

For this Saturday morning cooking lesson Sue makes Cornbread. This lesson explains how to grease a baking dish with melted fat/oil before pouring the batter into it. This cornbread contains sugar, which I believe makes it a northern cornbread recipe. Throughout all the books in the series, Sue and Bettina’s location is never mentioned. However, mention of cold in the winter and warmth during the summer months makes their location Some Town in a Northern State. Somewhere.

The directions call for pouring the batter into a drip pan. Drip pans fit into the stove underneath something that could boil over. Or they fit into the icebox (refrigerator) to catch water drops from melting ice. The recipe uses less than two cups of flour/meal, so a regular 8×8 or 7×11 pan should work quite well. Really, any pan that’s a bit more than 1.5 inches deep and about the dimensions of the two pans listed should work quite well. My cornbread always goes into a Pyrex 8 x 8 inch baking dish. Thirty years later than these directions, but it works well.

In this lesson Sue mentions Aunt Lucy and Uncle John, who we first meet in A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina’s Best Recipes. Bettina adores her aunt and uncle, so it stands that Sue would love them as well. Of course, they visit just in time for inclement weather to hit. And Uncle John still likes to tease. To learn the particulars, let’s peek at Sue’s cooking lesson notebook.

Sue’s notes on making cornbread

Aunt Lucy and Uncle John came in from the farm today to do some shopping. They always come to our house first and just as they arrived, a big blizzard arrived too. I like nothing better than a blizzard myself, but Aunt Lucy’s rheumatism was bad so Mother persuaded her to stay here all day and let Uncle John do the shopping. [This lesson takes place in February.]

“Just think, Aunt Lucy,” Mother said, “Sue and Ruth Ann are going to make cornbread today, and if you are here to lunch you can have some.” (Mother always is as enthusiastic as a girl.)

“Cornbread? That’s good news!” said Aunt Lucy. “With sour milk and soda?”

“No, with sweet milk and baking powder,” said Mother. “But it will be good just the same. You’ll see.”

“Cornbread?” said Uncle John looking out from behind the newspaper I thought he was reading. “I used to know a little girl who could make the best cornbread there ever was! Better, oh much better than yours, Susie!”

“How do you know it was better than mine, Uncle John?” I said indignantly. “You never ate mine in your whole life. And you go and talk that way about it, I won’t give you any this noon. So there!”

“This little girl’s cornbread,” Uncle John went on, just to tease me.

“What little girl? Mother?”

“No; a much littler girl than your Mother.”

At that I knew he meant Aunt Lucy, because he always jokes that way about her. “How old was she when you first ate her cornbread?” I asked him.

“Not a bit older than you,” he said. “But it isn’t only cornbread that she made. She could get the whole meal!”

“When she was only eleven?”

“Now John,” Aunt Lucy said. “Of course I couldn’t. I may have known how to make doughnuts and bread and a few common things like that, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of making Drop Cookies or Stuffed Potatoes or any of the hard things Sue can do.” (I could see Mother had been talking.)

“This noon,” I said firmly, “you will both have a chance to eat some of the best cornbread that ever was made, and if you’re very good, I may send some of it home with you. Uncle John,” I went on, “you’re going to see the day when I’m every bit as good a cook as Aunt Lucy.”

Uncle John gave me a big kiss when I made that rash statement, and Aunt Lucy said that just as soon as Spring came she wanted Ruth Ann and me to come out to the farm and do some cooking on her big “country stove.” Go? Well, I guess we will! There’s no place on earth as nice as the farm!

The recipe

Print Recipe

Twenties Cornbread

from When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • ¾ cup cornmeal
  • 1 ¼ cups flour
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 tsp baking powder
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup milk
  • 3 Tbsp lard or butter

Instructions

  • We put the cornmeal, white flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder all together in the flour sifter and sifted them twice. (Mother said once was enough, but both Ruth Ann and I wanted this cornbread to be specially good.) Then we each broke our egg into a bowl and beat it up with the egg beater. Then we added the milk to the egg and beat it for a minute longer. Then Mother told us to put the egg and milk right in with the cornmeal mixture and she had us stir this all up together for about three minutes.
  • We were each going to bake our cornbread in a nice little square dripping pan, and of course these had to be greased so the cornbread wouldn't stick. So Mother told us to measure out the lard we were going to use, right into the dripping pan and set them in the oven for a few minutes to melt. When the lard was all melted, she had us move the pan around so that all of the bottom and sides were greasy. Then she had us pour the lard out into the cornbread batter (that means the unbaked cornbread) and stir it up again. And then we poured the batter into the pans. (You see, the pans were all greased and ready.) The batter was about an inch and a half deep in the pans. Mother says it always ought to be just about that deep to make good cornbread.
  • Then we baked our cornbread in a moderate oven [350º F] for about twenty five minutes. Mother says sometimes it takes thirty minutes. It ought to be a lovely "hungry brown" [golden brown] on top when it is done. Ours was.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Baked Apples

VintageJenny

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. We’ve all heard it, and by the 1920s it was a common saying. During the autumn and winter Twenties cooks attempted to keep the family healthy by providing a variety of foods. Since variety lessens with the wintertime if you eat local or regional foods, fruits like apples take on importance. Today Sue makes Baked Apples designed to tempt jaded appetites.

This is Lesson 10 of a 51-lesson cooking course from 1924 called When Sue Began to Cook. Click the link if this is your first exposure to the series and it will take you back to Lesson 1.

In the book this recipe is actually called Ruth Ann’s Baked Apples. Sue’s mother Bettina spends lots of time trying to devise a way to get Ruth Ann to eat more. She thinks of naming a food after Ruth Ann as an enticement. We’ll see how that works out in Sue’s notes from the day’s class.

Sue’s notes on Ruth Ann’s Baked Apples

It seems to me Mother is a good deal more interested these days in what Ruth Ann eats than in what I eat, and ever since she gave her the blue bowl she has tried and tried to improve her appetite. (Ruth Ann’s appetite, of course.)

“We must teach her to cook the things she ought to eat,” Mother said to me this morning. “Her grandmother doesn’t realize what a thin little thing she is. We’ll have to make her rosy and strong before her Mother gets home.”

Baked apples was one of the foods Mother thought Ruth Ann ought to eat, and of course it was one of the things she ‘specially disliked. But Mother told us she had invented a new dish called Ruth Ann’s Baked Apples, a kind that every child — girl or boy — was sure to like.

“Mmm,” said Robin. “Make enough for me, too!” But I guess he doesn’t need any new dishes to make him eat.

These baked apples were good, much better than the common ones. And Ruth Ann really liked them. In fact, she ate two which was as many as Robin had.

While they were baking, Mother talked to us about oven meals. And about learning to plan, when you were using the oven for one dish, to make it a whole oven dinner. Of course with our two pans of baked apples there wasn’t a lot of room left in the oven. But Mother popped a little casserole of escalloped salmon in for our lunch so it could be cooking at the same time. “By the time this year is up,” she said, “I want you girls to be able to plan meals as well as cook them, and plan sensibly, too.” And I want you to help me do the marketing this summer.”

“Goodie!” said Robin. “I’ll go along with my wagon and haul the things home.”

“Fine,” said Mother. “And we’ll all learn to keep account of the money we spend.”

“Can I go marketing too?” Ruth Ann asked. “Will I be in the way?”

“In the way? Of course not!” replied my darling Mother. “Why, I want you to learn how so you can be the housekeeper when you’re back in your own house again.”

“If that time ever comes!” sighed Ruth Ann. But her eyes were shining and I knew she was feeling happy.

Make your own Baked Apples

Baked apples can be as simple as hollowing out apples, filling them with butter and a little brown sugar, and baking them. This recipe adds a little more flavor to make them special.

Print Recipe

Ruth Ann’s Baked Apples

From When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Ingredients

  • 4 large red apples all about the same size
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 tsp powdered cinnamon
  • 4 marshmallows
  • 4 halves English walnut meats
  • 8 raisins
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 Tbsp butter

Instructions

  • First of all we washed the apples and then Mother showed us how to get the core out with the corer. We did it by digging a hole right around the core but not clear through the apple. You see we had to make a cup of each apple to hold the filling, so it had to be a hole and not a tunnel. Then we washed the apples again and we each set ours (open side up, like a cup) in a little whte enamelled baking pan.
  • Next, Mother had us each take one third of our cup of light brown sugar and mix it with the cinnamon. We put this into the cavities of our apples and then stuffed a marshmallow, a nut-meat, and two raisins in on top of it. On top of that we put half a level tablespoon of butter in each apple. Then Mother had us mix the rest of the sugar (we each had two-thirds of a cup left, of course) with the water and pour that over the tops of the apples.
  • Then we put the baking dishes in the oven, just a moderate oven, Mother said [350º F]. And baked our apples 40 minutes. Oh yes, I forgot to say that Mother had us baste the apples several times while we were cooking. I had heard people talk about basting a turkey, and I always supposed that meant sewing it up with a thread. It doesn't at all. Basting means to take a big kitchen spoon and dip up the juice in the pan and pour it over whatever is cookihg. Well, we basted our baked apples several times to make them juicy and good, and it surely worked. They were the nicest, fattest, juciest baked apples you ever saw.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Baked Stuffed Potatoes

VintageJenny

Potatoes. Easy to store, open to amazing variety. This week Sue makes Baked Stuffed Potatoes for her weekly cooking lesson. We would call these twice baked potatoes, and they dress up simple meals beautifully. Planning on hamburger steaks for dinner, because that’s what you have available? These baked stuffed potatoes jazz up the meal and make it special.

This is the 9th installment of When Sue Began to Cook, where we meet Sue and her friend Ruth Ann. They gather on Saturday mornings and learn to cook from Sue’s mother Bettina. If this is your first dip into this series, click the book title to be transported to the first lesson.

Each lesson provides a recipe and a chapter of an ongoing story. Ruth Ann misses her absent, ill mother. Sue and Bettina help Ruth Ann cope with her loneliness. They keep her occupied on Saturday mornings with the cooking lessons. The stories appear in Sue’s notes from each cooking lesson.

Sue’s notes on the Baked Stuffed Potatoes lesson

Of course, it wouldn’t make so many dishes if Ruth Ann and I both worked on one recipe, but Mother has us each do it separately. You see, she has it all arranged so there are enough cooking things for each of us, and that is where the fun comes in. It isn’t any real satisfaction to help somebody else cook, but when you make your own baked potatoes and cocoa cookies all alone they taste lots better.

Mother says dishwashing is an art in itself and a good dishwasher is a real artist. She always has us fill our cooking pans with cold water the very minute we’re through using them, and let them soak. It makes them wash so much easier! Ruth Ann put hot water in the little saucepan the milk was heated in for her stuffed potatoes and when she went to wash it, it wouldn’t wash. Mother said milk dishes ought always to be soaked in cold water. In fact, cold water is best for most things. But of course when we really wash the dishes, we have to have hot water and lots of soap suds.

Just so I won’t forget them, I’ll put down the dishwashing rules. First the glasses and then the silver, and you don’t rinse them at all, just wash them in nice clean hot soap suds and dry them with a nice dry clean dish cloth. But all the china dishes and cooking dishes have to be rinsed with scalding water before they are dried.

If you have lots of hot water and nice soap suds, washing dishes is really fun. Why, Ruth Ann and I laugh so much while we’re doing it that Robin and Ted actually come to the back door and beg us to let them help!

The Baked Stuffed Potatoes recipe

This version of twice baked potatoes is a little different from ones you may know. It uses milk to make the mashed potatoes creamy, and then you top it with cheese. Usually we cut potatoes lengthwise, like the twice baked potato skins appetizer from the 1980s. Twenties recipes often cut the potatoes across the middle, so the two ends look more like cups than like boats. When the directions tell you to cut the potatoes in this recipe, cut them around the middle instead of lengthwise.

Print Recipe

Baked Stuffed Potatoes

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924

Ingredients

  • 4 large good-looking potatoes all about the same size
  • 2 Tbsp butter
  • 1 tsp salt (this may be a little much)
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • ¾ cup hot milk
  • ⅓ cup grated cheese

Instructions

  • We scrubbed the potatoes clean with the little vegetable brush, and then made a cut right around each of them through the outside skin but not through the potato. Then we put them in a moderate oven and baked them till they were very done. It took nearly an hour because they were big fellows. Mother showed us how to test them to see whether they were done. Not with a fork this time, but with a clean dish towel. She had us take them out of the oven and hold them in the cloth, pressing them to see whether or not they were soft.
  • Note: Moderate oven here is 350 – 375º F.
  • When we found that they felt soft and mealy inside, we took them out and cut each one in two right around its waist, exactly where it had been marked with the knife before.
  • Then we each took all of the mealy potato part out of the skin of our potatoes with a big spoon. We put it in a bowl. (We were very careful not to break the skins while we were doint it, too. And we saved the skins.) When the soft potato was all in the bowl, we mashed it up with a potato masher till there waasn't a single lump in it. (Robin helped Ruth Ann but I did mine every bit alone.)
  • Then when all the lumps were out but the potato was still hot, we added the butter, salt, paprika and hot milk. Then we beat it some more just as hard and fast as we could, to make it light and fluffy.
  • When the potato mixture was fluffly and white, we piled it back in the skins again. Mother said not to mash it down but to pile it up roughly and lightly. When the potato cases were all filled we sprinkled the grated cheese over the tops. (Our cheese happened to be hard and dry so we could grate it easily. Mother says when the cheese is fresh and soft, to cut it up in very fine little pieces instead of grating it.)
  • Then we put all the potatoes in pie pans and set them in a hot oven for fifteen minutes. When we took them out the tops were all a beautiful light brown color. We had them for lunch without any meat because Mother told us the cheese in the potatoes would take the place of meat. My, they tasted good!
  • Note: A hot oven as directed here is 400-425º F.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes French Toast

VintageJenny

Every cook should have a simple recipe for French Toast. Sue was no different, so Bettina teaches this dish during Lesson 8 of When Sue Began to Cook. Today Sue makes French toast. This is the eighth in a series that covers the recipes and content of the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook. Click the link to start at the beginning and you can follow Sue and her friend Ruth Ann as they learn their way around the kitchen.

Although French Toast seems simple, little changes in preparation method can alter the taste and texture. Altering ingredients can change the taste as well, of course. Generally when I make French Toast I use cinnamon. This recipe doesn’t do that. It uses sugar, but no cinnamon. It also begins with toasted bread, which I find unusual. I’m looking forward to giving this a try.

As always, Sue has something to say about the lesson. This is where we learn a bit more about Sue and Ruth Ann, and today Sue has something to say about another friend in her circle. Sue often reminds me of her mother Bettina. Bettina always had an opinion about everything.

Sue’s notes on the French Toast lesson

French Toast always looked to me as if it would be hard to make, so when Mother asked us if we wouldn’t like to have Jean over to lunch after our cooking lesson and let her try some of our own French Toast, I was quite surprised. “But will it really be good enough?” I wondered.

“Of course it will,” Mother said. “You and Jean and Ruth Ann may eat at the little table in the sunroom. You can have some cold meat and some creamed carrots besides the French Toast. And of course, you can have bread and jelly, and milk to drink.

Jean is the prettiest and most dashing friend I have (I said this before Father once and he laughed for fifteen minutes, but even so, it is true.) And we don’t always get along very well. Mother says it is because we both like to manage, and perhaps it is, but Ruth Ann never manages and she doesn’t get along with Jean either. Still, that may be because Ruth Ann is so shy. Jean isn’t shy at all.

Inviting Jean to lunch

I had mentioned our cooking lessons to Jean once or twice, and she seemed quite impressed though she always had something to answer about her own violin lessons or her French lessons. When I invited her this time, I said carelessly, “By the way, Jean, Ruth Ann and I are going to make French Toast tomorrow morning at our cooking lesson. Can’t you come over and eat lunch with us at twelve thirty? We’ll let you try some of it.”

“Are you really truly going to make it all alone?” Jean said. “Will you show me how? I know I could do anything Ruth Ann can do!”

“Ruth Ann has already learned to make creamed potatoes, and cocoa drop cookies and black walnut fudge and cinnamon cocoa,” I answered. “So I guess you’d have quite a hard time catching up with her now. And anyhow, you’re only invited to lunch and lunch isn’t till twelve thirty. We have our cooking lesson at ten.”

“As for that, Miss Sue,” said Jean, just as haughtily as I had spoken, “I have my French lesson at ten. So naturally I couldn’t get there at that time. But I’ll come to lunch if your mother really said you could invite me and if my mother will let me.”

I didn’t dare tell Ruth Ann about this conversation. Ruth Ann, even if she is my best friend, isn’t much braver than a rabbit. And if she knew Jean had spoken with contempt of her ability to cook, she’d probably burn her French toast so black nobody could eat it and that wasn’t my plan at all.

But everything went off beautifully. The French Toast looked perfectly grand if I do say it, and Mother let us set the little table with some of her prettiest dishes and the darling little baby fern in the center. And she didn’t let Robin bother us either. He had his lunch first and went off to Teddy’s to play.

Jean didn’t have much to say when we would ask her, “Won’t you try some of my French toast?” (It took all of Ruth Ann’s and mine, too.) But she seemed to like it. At least she ate a great deal and so did we.

Oh, it’s lots of fun to be really learning to cook, and to be inviting your own company to lunch to eat your own French toast! I guess Jean envied us all right, though wild horses couldn’t have made her say so!

Sue’s French Toast recipe

Print Recipe

French Toast

From When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 4 slices bread toasted evenly on both sides
  • 1 egg
  • ½ cup milk
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 3 Tbsp bacon fat
  • Maple syrup to serve

Instructions

  • Mother had us take a wide shallow bowl, one large enough to hold a piece of toast. (I don't mean that we put the toast into it yet, though.) We broke one egg into our bowl and beat it up with the Dover egg beater. Then we added the milk, sugar and salt and kept on beating till they were all mixed. [If you don't have an old-fashioned egg beater, a whisk will work, too.]
  • Then we put the bacon fat into a frying pan over the fire, and let it get steaming hot. Then we turned the fire low under it.
  • We had already toasted the bread, and now Mother had us dip it into the egg mixture. We took each slice on a fork and dipped it carefully into the egg and then out again right into the hot frying pan. We let the toast get good and brown on the under side. Then we turned each slice over with a fork so that it could get brown on the other side too. In cooking it, we had to turn up the fire a little to make it hotter.
  • I forgot to say that before we started dipping our toast, we cut it into three-cornered pieces so we each had eight pieces instead of four. [In other words, cut each piece of toast diagonally.] Mother told us not to leave it in the egg mixture very long or it would absorb too much and there wouldnt be enough egg to last. But as we did it, there was plenty.
  • We helped the French Toast out onto our nice littl blue platters that were piping hot because they'd been standing in a warm place all the time, and there it was, all ready to serve with maple syrup from the big can.

Notes

If you want to use butter, ghee, or oil in place of bacon fat the recipe will still work. It will taste a bit different, however. 
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Brown Betty with Hard Sauce

VintageJenny

Dessert held a solid position at the 1920s table. Rather than adding sugar at the end of the meal, dessert added extra nutrition. Fruit, dairy, and eggs often appeared as part of the dessert table. And in Lesson 7 of When Sue Began to Cook, apples take center spotlight in Brown Betty with Hard Sauce. (If you missed the beginning of this series, it’s When Sue Began to Cook.

Brown Betty is a simple baked apple dessert usually served with a sauce. Hard sauce was originally made with a hard liquor. Whiskey, brandy, and rum all qualify. However, in the Twenties the United States was in the middle of Prohibition. Even if cooks used liquors at home, no cookbook of the period would include alcoholic beverages in any recipe. So this version of hard sauce is alcohol free, and includes vanilla as a flavoring. This is similar to the hard sauce recipe I learned to make, probably because my grandmother was cooking in the Twenties without alcohol in her pantry.

Sue’s notes on Brown Betty and Hard Sauce

(Of course, Sue isn’t going to say anything about an alcohol free hard sauce. Prohibition was a way of life at the time, so no one drew attention to it in their cookbooks until after it was repealed and alcohol recipes started to make their way back in.)

“Ruth Ann’s father is coming home tonight to stay over Sunday,” I told Mother at breakfast. “I wish we could make something he’d like in our cooking lesson today. Ruth Ann could take it home.”

You see, Ruth Ann’s father isn’t like mine, home all the time except when he’s down at the office. He travels and isn’t here so very often. And now that her mother is in Arizona for her health and she is staying with her grandmother, she gets very lonesome. I don’t know what she’d do without our Saturday cooking lessons.

“Of course we’ll make something good that Ruth Ann can take home,” Mother agreed. “Something Uncle Harry will like.” (I have a very satisfactory mother. She nearly always agrees with me.) “What shall it be?”

“Oh, Mother,” I said, “can’t we make Brown Betty? Grown people and children both like that, and you know we have lots of apples.”

“Just the thing. And you can make hard sauce, too.”

Ruth Ann is very quiet, the quietest friend I have. And I don’t believe she would ever have asked Mother to let us make something she could take home. But when the puddings were al finished, and her hard sauce was all ready and cold, I could see that she was excited and happy.

“Won’t Father be surprised to find out I’m really learning to cook?” she said when she told us good-bye. “Perhaps he’ll try to get home oftener if he has my puddings and cookies and good things to look forward to!”

I don’t know why that made Mother wipe her eyes, but it did. Then she went straight to the telephone to invite Ruth Ann’s grandmother and father and Ruth Ann over to our house to Sunday dinner tomorrow.

Recipe for Brown Betty

Here’s the recipe for the apple dessert.

Print Recipe

Brown Betty

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924

Ingredients

  • 3 cups peeled diced apples
  • 2 cups fresh bread crumbs
  • 2 tsp powdered cinnamon
  • ½ cup light brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp melted butter
  • 2 cups water

Instructions

  • Mother had us wash the apples first and then cut them in quarters. Then we peeled them and took out the cores. At last we cut them up in very small dice.
  • Then we measured out our bread curmbs. Not dried crumbs that Mother was saving for escalloped dishes, but crumbs of fresh bread or bread that was only a little dry.
  • We each mixed our apples, crumbs, cinnamon, and sugar, and then added the lemon juice. (Mother says the lemon juice can be left out if you don't happen to have it, or you can use a teaspoon of lemon extract instead.) Then we added the melted butter and the water, and mixed it all up together.
  • Then we buttered a baking dish (I took the little brown casserole) and poured the apple mixture into it.
  • The oven was already hot (Mother had us light it a few minutes before) and so we turned it down quite low and put our puddings in to bake for forty minutes.
  • Note: A quite low oven would be about 325º F.
  • While they were baking, Mother had us make Hard Sauce for them. [Sue and her friend Ruth Ann are each making every recipe separately so they have two of everything.] Of course, Robin and I always eat cream on our Brown Betty, but Father likes Hard Sauce best.

Recipe for Hard Sauce

Although most people serve this liquid, this recipe actually makes a moldable square of sauce that you cut and place onto the cooked pudding.

Print Recipe

Hard Sauce

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Ingredients

  • ⅓ cup butter
  • 1 Tbsp boiling water
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp lemon extract
  • ⅛ tsp salt
  • ⅛ tsp powdered cinnamon
  • 1 ¼ cups sifted powdered sugar

Instructions

  • We mashed the butter down with a spoon till it was soft and creamy. Then we added the boiling water, vanilla, lemon extract, salt and cinnamon. We mixed it all up very thoroughly for a minute. Then we added the powdered sugar (we had sifted it with the flour sifter so there wasn't a single lump in it) very slowly, mixing hard all the time.
  • When all the sugar had been added, Mother had each of us shape our hard sauce into a little oblong cake. We used a knife dipped in cold water to smooth down the edges and make them square. Then we set our little cakes in the icebox for an hour to get very cold.
  • Mother says the right way to do is to cut off small slices of the hard sauce and serve it on top of a dish of warm pudding. The hard sauce does look good, but Brown Betty with cream is one of my favorite childhood dishes, so I think I'll stick to that, and let Father and Mother eat theirs the other way.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Cheese Potatoes

VintageJenny

(This is the continuation of a series on When Sue Began to Cook.) Saturday December 30 brought Sue and Ruth Ann to the slow week between holidays. Christmas was over, and New Year stood several days away. Not much to do for a couple twelve year olds, so today’s recipe focuses on comfort food. Sue makes cheese potatoes (or Creamed Cheesed Potatoes)

Sometimes these potatoes are served from the stove, like you’ll find in the recipe below. Most often, though, the finished recipe goes into a casserole dish to be topped with cracker crumbs and then baked in the oven. That version appears in Sue’s notes.

Sue’s notes on cheese potatoes

Holiday week is a queer time for a cooking lesson, I suppose, and a queerer time to be learning to cook potatoes. But Ruth Ann and I were tired of Christmas candy, so we asked Mother today if we couldn’t make something plain and simple. Because, after all, we ought to learn to be plain cooks first.

‘How would you like to try creamed potatoes then?” Mother said. “It will be a good time to teach you to boil potatoes, and also to make good cream sauce. Every woman ought to know how to make good cream sauce. Just thick enough, and without any lumps in it.”

I asked Mother if we couldn’t try some Cheesed Creamed Potatoes because Father is so fond of them, and she said we might. “And Ruth Ann may take hers home and warm them up for dinner. It is time she showed her grandmother just what we’re learning in the cooking lessons.

Another way to finish the potatoes

And after all, I thought Ruth Ann had the best of it. When the potatoes were all done and it was time for her to go, Mother had her put hers in a little brown casserole. Then she showed Ruth Ann how to roll out some crackers with the rolling pin to make cracker crumbs, just about two thirds of a cupful. Then she had Ruth Ann sprinkle the cracker crumbs on top of the potatoes and spread them out nice and even. And then they dotted the top with little chunks of butter.

“Now, Ruth Ann,” Mother said, “when you warm up your potatoes, put them in the oven in this casserole (without the cover), and let the crumbs get a beautiful brown color.”

“A hungry brown?” I said, because that’s what Robin and I always call it.

“Yes, a hungry brown. By that time the potatoes will be good and hot. All ready to eat!”

I didn’t tell Mother so, but Ruth Ann’s potatoes in the casserole really looked much more companified than mine. Still, I can’t complain, because Father ate two helpings of the ones I made, and paid me for them with three kisses and a big hug.

Note: Warm the potatoes at 350º F for 20 – 25 minutes until the potatoes are hot and the crumbs golden brown.

Sue’s recipe for Cheesed Creamed Potatoes

Here’s the recipe that Sue made, without the cracker crumb topping.

Print Recipe

Cheesed Creamed Potatoes

From When Sue Began to Cook, 1924. One of the dishes Father likes best.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups cooked potatoes diced That means to cut in little cubes.
  • 4 tbsp butter
  • 4 tbsp flour
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • ⅓ cup cheese cut in small pieces
  • 1 tbsp pimientos, cut fine Mother says the pimientos aren't necessary. We put them in because we happened to have some.
  • 1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped fine

Instructions

  • Mother had us scrub the potatoes with a little brush till they were very clean. Then she showed us how to run a sharp knife around the equator of each potato, cutting through the skin to keep the potato from bursting when it is cooked. Then she had us each fill a little kettle with water and put it over the fire. As soon as the water was boiling, we added the potatoes. We covered them with a lid, and kept the potatoes dancing in the boiling water until they were done. We knew when they were done because Mother had us try piercing them with a fork every once in a while. When the fork would go right through them very easily we knew they had cooked long enough.
  • We drained off the water and let the potatoes get cool. Then we peeled them with a sharp little vegetable knife and cut them up in tiny half-inch cubes. (Mother says that a good cook always has her kitchen knives sharp). Mother showed us how to make nice neat little cubes all the same size. Then our potatoes were ready.
  • *Note: The vegetable peeler wasn't invented until 1928, and the Jonas peeler, with a swivel blade that follows the contour of the vegetable as you cut, wasn't invented until 1953. In 1924, a short vegetable knife was the only option in peeling a potato.
  • Next we took a clean little saucepan and put the butter in it. We let the butter melt over the fire and then we stirred in the flour and mixed them well. When they were all mixed, we added the milk and cooked it slowly, stirring all the time, until it was creamy. (We let it bubble for a few minutes to cook the flour thoroughly.) Then we stirred in the salt, paprika, cheese, (I forgot to say we had cut the cheese fine first of all), pimientoes and parsley. We cooked this all together for about a minute, still stirring all the time so it wouldn't burn. Then we added the potatoes and mixed them around well in the sauce. We let it cook for about two minutes more, and then Mother said it was ready.
  • Most people make their cheesed potatoes out of leftover boiled or baked potatoes, Mother says, but she didn't have us use any leftovers because she thought this would be a good time to teach us exactly how to boil potatoes.

Notes

This is a good example of when and how to use a white sauce in Twenties cookery.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue’s Favorite Cocoa

VintageJenny

This post continues a series of lessons from the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook. The series began with the post When Sue Began to Cook. Now in Lesson 5, the date this Saturday is December 23. What a good time for Sue and her friend Ruth Ann to make a winter vacation treat like Sue’s Favorite Cocoa.

Hot cocoa is good almost any time of the year, especially with marshmallows. However, it becomes especially welcome during the colder months. This hot cocoa recipe from the Bettina’s Best Recipes cookbooks is a family favorite at our house, too. This is an updated recipe from the 1917 cookbook A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina’s Best Recipes. It uses cocoa powder instead of a square of chocolate, which makes it much less expensive to make.

Sue’s notes from the cooking lesson

Here’s what Sue had to say in her cooking notebook:

At first Mother said we wouldn’t have a cooking lesson today because it was so close to Christmas, but Ruth Ann and I begged so hard that she finally relented, only she said we must make something easy.

“I know, Mother, let’s try cocoa. The kind with cinnamon in it!” I suggested. “Just think how much it will help if I really know how to make it!”

“Sue’s Favorite Cocoa?” Mother said, because that’s what she always calls it. “Perhaps if you know how to make it, you’ll make it so often that you’ll get tired of it.”

“Oh, I know I won’t!” I told her. “I think cocoa is delicious when it’s made right, but deliver me from a Mother who doesn’t cook it at all — just pours boiling water over it!” (That is the way Emma Jane’s mother makes it. I discovered that when our club met there.)

“If my mother would only come home, I wouldn’t care how she cooked!” cried Ruth Ann, bursting into tears.

Of course it is especially hard not to have your mother at home for Christmas, but I could tell from Mother’s face that she hadn’t realized how badly Ruth Ann was feeling. “Would it help any, Ruth Ann, if you stayed over here and hung up your stocking with Robin’s and Sue’s?” Mother asked.

“Oh, Aunt Bettina, of course it would! Won’t you ask Grandmother yourself? She’s sure to let me if you do the asking.”

“Goody! Goody!” I said. “Hurry, Mother. Telephone her first, and then come and teach us how to make the cocoa.”

Ruth Ann’s grandmother said she could stay, and perhaps that was the reason the cocoa turned out so well. It was seasoned with happiness as well as cinnamon, Mother said.

Sue’s Favorite Cocoa

Here’s the recipe for Sue’s Favorite Cocoa, just as it was written in When Sue Began to Cook.

Print Recipe

Sue’s Favorite Cocoa

From 1924 When Sue Began to Cook.

Ingredients

  • 4 tbsp cocoa powdered, level measure
  • 4 tbsp sugar
  • ⅛ tsp salt
  • ⅛ tsp powdered cinnamon
  • 1 cup water
  • 3 cups milk
  • ¼ tsp vanilla
  • 4 marshmallows

Instructions

  • We mixed the cocoa, sugar, salt and cinnamon together very carefully with a teaspoon. (If they aren't mixed well, Mother says the cinnamon floats on the top and the cocoa isn't so good.)
  • Then we each put our mixture into a saucepan and added the water. We cooked it slowly, stirring it all the time, until it got to be like a nice thick chocolate syrup. Then Mother had us add the milk slowly. We turned the fire low, and heated the cocoa till it was steamy and hot. (Mother told us not to let it boil.) When it was steaming hot, we added the vamilla and then beat the coca for a minute or two with a Dover egg beater. (Mother said that would keep it from getting scummy on the top. Robin likes the scum, but once he burnt his tongue on it, so I think Mother's way is best.)
  • Note: A Dover egg beater is a hand-operated mixer with two mixing blades. It was generally used to mix eggs, whip cream, and combine liquids. Oxo Good Grips makes a modern version that works relatively well, or you can use a whisk.
  • Mother had me put the four marshmallows in four cups and when we were ready, we poured the cocoa in on top of them. Of course people can use whipped cream instead of marshmallows if they have it, but most families don't, I've noticed. Anyhow marshmallow cocoa is very good.